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en-usFri, 18 Aug 2017 01:07:47 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=24532&category=cdae
Mon, 01 May 2017 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=24532&category=cdaeEach Winter Break, while many college students head to tropical destinations for some much needed rest and relaxation, 20 UVM students and two professors head to the Caribbean for another reason — community development through service-learning.

Since 2003, the UVM Department of Community Development and Applied Economics (CDAE) and the St. Lucian Ministry of Commerce have engaged in a mutually beneficial partnership (which has expanded over the years to include the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations & Sustainable Development), facilitating connections between local schools and, most recently, the Piton Management Area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Professors DeSisto and Kevin Stapleton recognize the importance of conducting community development with the chief goal of building the capacity of the community to take action on their own priorities, and the course itself has evolved to meet the changing needs and desires of the partners in St. Lucia since the first team of UVM students and faculty visited in 2004. "Project planning revolves around what St. Lucians would like to see happen," explains DeSisto. "In all of these projects, the core part of it is community development — helping the people in that given community develop the capacity to take their own action on the things that they want."

The goal not simply to complete a project, but to help partners figure out how to enact what they would like to accomplish. The course facilitates the development of this capacity by sharing expertise, conducting research for the Ministries, and equipping UVM students with the skills and knowledge necessary to advance short-term priorities that the community has identified.

In the past five years that DeSisto and Stapleton have been leading the course, they have focused on working with both the Ministry of Commerce and local schools. Continuing to build connections with the same community partners, year after year, has allowed the relationship between the CDAE department and the St. Lucian institutions to develop trust and reciprocity in their ongoing work. While some aid organizations come and go at will, CDAE can be depended upon to return every year. Consistency is key — for both parties — in building and maintaining the relationships necessary to benefit both the St. Lucian partners and the UVM students.

"The partnership between the University of Vermont and the Ministry of Commerce & Government of St. Lucia started way back in 2003, and this has assisted us very well," says Lyra Thomas-Joseph, who works in the St. Lucia Ministry of Commerce. "The department is looking to continue that relationship and even to broaden the scope."

Although the partnerships develop in St. Lucia, their benefits are no less tangible for the students involved, who experience both detailed project planning in the classroom and actual project implementation out in the real world. This hands-on approach, throughout the course of a semester, offers students the opportunity to both learn and do community development. Students gain a functional skill set, learned and practiced in the field.

While the two professors take the lead in the classroom, students are largely self-directed once they arrive in St. Lucia. The class of 20 divides into their project groups of four and students disperse to work with their partners. After a semester of preparation, students are well-equipped to work independently with their community partners, tackling challenges and testing their skills in real time. "It puts you out in the field," explains UVM student Zach Lewellyn. "You're not there with your professors; you're doing the work, you're talking to the locals and the tourists, and it's on you to get it done."

Melissa Abbott, a Community & International Development major, illustrates how this independence defined her experience. Melissa and her project group worked with the Riviere Doree Anglican School to revitalize their existing garden space. After the initial introduction between the group and the project partners — Riviere Doree’s principal, the head of the lunch program, and a teacher leading the agricultural club — Melissa and her group worked and communicated directly with the school. Each morning, she recounts, the groups split up and spread across the island for their respective projects, only returning to the rest of the class in the evening for a reflective period. While their professors were accessible for questions or concerns as needed, the group worked independently and unsupervised each day. They designed a curriculum and worked with their partners to offer Riviere Doree students hands-on lessons about gardening, composting, and nutrition.

It's this combination of independence and being part of being part of a long-standing, reciprocal partnership — along with the opportunity to experience life on a beautiful Caribbean island — that has made the course so popular and valuable to UVM students. "The longevity is what makes this such a successful project," says Molly O'Shea ’17. "Doing service work abroad often feels unsustainable to me, but seeing the ties that Thomas and Kevin have with this community, and the respect of such a mutually beneficial partnership, made me understand the importance of this work. I feel I have done a fair amount of service-learning during my time at UVM, and I can honestly say that this was one of the most valuable service-learning experiences I have had."

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Mon, 24 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=24461&category=cdaeFood–in all its forms, from farms, to value added products–is inherent to Vermont's culture; so it is fitting that UVM is part of the Real Food Challenge national campaign that aims to "shift 20 percent of existing university food budgets in the U.S. (equivalent to approximately $1 billion) from conventional agricultural products to local, ecologically sound, fair, and humane products by 2020."

UVM was the fifth school to sign onto the Real Food Challenge, and they met it. Three years ahead of schedule. Their new goal is 25 percent by 2020.

It's been an ongoing push, starting in 2008 and including students in the Real Food Challenge network, dining directors, financial and budget managers, farmers, and other campus stakeholders. Over time they've secured $60 million worth of pledges to purchase more local, fair, sustainable, and humane food. 42 schools are on board and students at 236 others are tracking food purchases using the Real Food Calculator, a tool provided by the Real Food Challenge network.

An attractive public-facing campaign can often provide fodder for academics working behind the scenes collecting data, surveying stakeholders, and running stastistical binary logistic models to determine which student characteristics affect or predict one's willingness to pay for this new "real" designation on campus food.

A paper published in the Journal of Agricultural Human Values–a high-impact food systems journal–led by Sodexo Food Systems Fellow Jennifer Porter and supported in authorship by CDAE faculty David Conner and Chair Jane Kolodinsky as well as Nutrition and Food Systems professor Amy Trubek found that student characteristics and attitudes significantly influence their willingness to pay. Specifically, gender, residency, college, and attitudes about price and origin of food are significant predictors.

In a quintessential example of service learning in CDAE, the researchers used data collected in CDAE 250: Applied Research Methods taught by David Conner to run their logistic models in order to produce their findings.

"Values are often considered to be enduring, but college can be a “coming-of-age” time in students’ lives when they begin to question their values and beliefs." The authors write. "As such, universities may be particularly effective places to influence students’ values surrounding food. Our results indicate that students who highly value the price of food are less likely to prefer “real” food. It may be quite difficult to change the importance of price in students’ decision making, given constrained budgets. Therefore, it may be more realistic to influence the importance of the origin of food in students’ decision-making processes."

"Seeing this article published makes me happy in many ways," notes David Conner, CDAE faculty member. "First, it is a great culmination of the graduate student mentoring process. Second, it utilizes data gathered by a service-learning class. Finally, it helps inform an important and highly visible food systems development effort on campus."

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Thu, 20 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=24437&category=cdaeEstefania Puerta has received $90,000 from The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, the premier graduate school fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants in the U.S. Of 1,775 applicants, Puerta was one of 30 to receive this prestigous fellowship -- a decision made on the applicants' potential to make significant contributions to U.S. society, culture, or their academic field.

Estefania received her Bachelor of Science from the Community Development and Applied Economics (CDAE) department at UVM in 2010, majoring in Community and International Development. A standout student, teaching assistant, and community member, she remained in Burlington after graduation to deepen her pursuit of art, establish performance art events in Burlington, and strengthen the already vibrant Burlington art scene.

Born in Colombia, Estefania immigrated with her mother to Boston at the age of two, trailing her father, who had come to the U.S. the year before. Finally reunited, Estefania’s parents set out to pursue a future in which she could be the first in the family to graduate from college and have a better life.

It was during high school that Estefania discovered her love of art and literature. Art gave Estefania a new world to discover and cultivate. She went to the art museums in Boston and learned about art history, including the lack of inclusion and representation of women artists from different cultural backgrounds.

After high school, Estefania pursued a degree in community and international development at the University of Vermont. Not only did she get hands-on experience working with vulnerable populations, but she was also able to take art classes and cultivate her love of creative expression. As fruitful as this time was, Estefania was still unable to pursue certain endeavors due to her immigration status. She is grateful for the professors who pushed her to improve on her work and keep pursuing her dream.

Since graduating from college, Estefania has become a U.S. citizen. With the newly found privilege of citizenship, she is committed to ensuring others are given the same encouragement and support she was given while living in the shadows. Estefania has finally been able to follow her dream of being an artist. She is currently pursuing her MFA in painting and printmaking at the Yale University School of Art. She hopes to deepen her critical approach to her art practice and create space for more immigrant Latina artists in the art world.

DiMario is writing his senior thesis on how the opioid epidemic has been framed in the news media. In particular, he is interested in how media coverage focuses on societal issues that led to the crisis, including the role of the pharmaceutical industry in promoting painkillers. LeBaron-Brien studies communications strategies to tackle social problems and build communities.

In former Governor Shumlin's Twitter account, the duo found a high-profile forum to test their knowledge – a forum that comes with 20,000 followers. Shumlin was one of the first governors in the country to call attention to the unfolding opiate crisis, devoting his entire state-of-the-state address to the issue in 2014. He remains a strong advocate for reforming a system that widely prescribes drugs, sometimes resulting in addiction and personal devastation.

“It is an awesome responsibility” DiMario said. “But it’s a chance to make a real impact on these critical issues.”

DiMario and LeBaron-Brien wrote the tweets, attempting to channel Shumlin's no-holds-barred voice. “We were shy at first,” says LeBaron-Brien. “But then we started to get more comfortable. We settled into Peter’s voice and people are giving us good feedback, lots of ‘likes’ and ‘retweets.’”

Students have also tweeted on health care, immigration, and renewable energy, all topics Shumlin is passionate about. Some of the tweets have been read by more than 7,000 people.

The duo uses a program called Hootsuite to follow the conversation, then tests their tweets through a "dummy" Twitter handle, learning the ins-and-outs of effective Tweet-craft.

Their work is facilitated through an internship with the Center for Research on Vermont, under the direction of Richard Watts, a faculty member in CDAE. Watts and his students will present their work at Student Research Day, April 27.

LeBaron-Brien is a junior in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, double majoring in community and international development and community entrepreneurship. DiMario is a graduating senior from the College of Arts and Sciences, double majoring in sociology and linguistics. (See also story in Seven Days).

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Wed, 01 Mar 2017 00:00:00 -0500http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=24147&category=cdaeIn just a few weeks, CDAE Professor Josh Farley will be on a plane to Brazil to continue his research on the interconnections between agroecology, ecosystem services, economic institutions and human welfare in the Atlantic Forest.

Since 2009, Farley has been working with Brazilian farmers, the Santa Rosa De Lima government, and the Federal University of Santa Catarina to create sustainable solutions for the fragile forest system – 85% of which is now destroyed.

The focus is on the economics of what is essential and Farley argues that although food is the most important thing to produce, it is also the most threatening to the ecosystem. The only way to solve this catastrophic situation is to develop agricultural methods that simultaneously benefit the ecosystem as well as the economic well-being of local farmers, all while feeding the region – home to two-thirds of Brazil’s population; but, developing the agricultural methods is only the first part of the solution.

To effectively implement changes, Farley and his team are collaborating with “state, local, and national government to develop policies that will disseminate the practice across the landscape at the pace necessary to prevent ecological collapse,” he explains. The dissemination of the newly developed agricultural methods, he argues, justify the work they are doing: without widespread adoption, the developed methods would not provide great value to Brazil and its people.

Although agroecological practices are more labor- and knowledge- intensive, they produce higher yields while cutting down on fossil fuels; in other words, the work is well-worth the costs.

“Every region can have its own agroecological system,” adds Farley. This can be as simple as adding leaves or grass from your yard to the soil of your garden to add nutrients, instead of buying toxic fertilizers. Similarly, the practices Farley and his team are developing will help to revitalize and preserve the ecosystem in the Atlantic Rainforest, while producing native food to feed the region.

“Let’s do the right thing while we have time,” suggests Farley. Through this particular case study, he and his colleagues are hoping to create techniques that can be replicated worldwide.

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Wed, 18 Jan 2017 00:00:00 -0500http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23918&category=cdae"When my parents moved to Putney in 1964, we bought our gasoline at the General Store.

The gasoline cost 32 cents a gallon – which, when you adjust for inflation – is about $2.50 today. In fact, when I stopped to buy gas just recently, the cost was $2.30 cents – actually cheaper today, in real terms, than fifty years ago.

At the same time, transportation has changed dramatically. In 1964 it took a half hour to get from Putney to Brattleboro on Route 5. Today you can do the trip in five minutes on I-91."

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Thu, 15 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0500http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23826&category=cdaeIn 2013, Duncan Hilchey and Amy Christian found themselves looking for ways to make their enterprise, a scholarly journal featuring applied food systems research, financially sustainable. The Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development (JAFSCD) had been a labor of love for the past three years, a project into which they had poured their time, as well as their personal savings.

They knew their new publication, which combined Hilchey’s experience in food and agriculture with Christian’s experience in publishing, had the potential to help researchers and practitioners across the food system access timely, applied food systems research. They had proof of concept—readers had demonstrated the demand for a journal in this niche for its first three years—but the standard publishing model, which relies on expensive subscriptions to generate revenue, didn’t match their goal of providing broad access to readers outside the academy. They needed a new financial model to support a new kind of journal—a journal that had been launched to help change the food system.

As the field of food systems was picking up momentum in academia, editor in chief Hilchey and managing editor Christian decided to invite a few higher education institutions to be founding partners of the journal. This, they knew, would help underwrite their costs to keep the price of subscriptions down, as well as allow them to grow the JAFSCD quickly. The first university they approached was the University of Vermont.

In 2013, the timing was right for UVM, three years into a transdisciplinary initiative on food systems education, research, and outreach. As a land-grant university, UVM has a tradition of agricultural education and extension, and developing its food systems curriculum was a natural next step. The Graduate College had just launched an MS in Food Systems, the university was making new investments in research, and an annual Food Systems Summit was helping to increase the public visibility of food systems at UVM.

UVM faculty member Jane Kolodinsky had served as a reviewer for JAFSCD since 2010, and had also published in it—a paper on a local food hub. Kolodinsky knew it was a risk for UVM to invest in such a new endeavor, but she, like Hilchey and Christian, believed that applied food systems scholarship should be accessible to a wide audience. Plus, if the journal took off, there would be public relations value to enhance UVM’s reputation in food systems.

“The field of food systems is both transdisciplinary and translational, with community organizations and government agencies as involved as academic researchers,” says Kolodinsky. “In order to be useful, new research has to get into the hands of the people who will use it. We wanted UVM to have a role in making that happen.”

With UVM on board, Hilchey and Christian approached the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University and also the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. After a brief search for a Canadian institution to round out the team, they found a match in Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, and they had their four founding partners. (After its initial three-year sponsorship, the Leopold Center left and its spot was filled by a joint sponsorship of North Carolina State Extension and the Center for Environmental Farming Systems.)

Continuing Innovation

JAFSCD fills a niche in the world of food systems research: in addition to being intentionally transdisciplinary, it targets audiences both within and outside the academy—nonprofit practitioners and community activists as well as academic researchers. While less theoretical than some academic journals, it features scholarship that does not usually reach technical and professional audiences. The journal is only published online, thus meeting the simultaneous goals of keeping costs down and limiting the journal’s environmental impact.

As readership and interest in the journal continue to grow, Hilchey and Christian are seeking new ways to further increase access, and are exploring innovative methods to provide open access to readers. They have cultivated relationships with Extension and outreach programs. They created a series of 2-page Food Systems Research, Policy, and Practice Briefs to reach audiences who may not have the time or finances to access the longer journal articles summarized in the briefs. The journal has also been a driving force in the development of a new network for food systems professionals, the North American Food Systems Network (NAFSN).

In 2017, JAFSCD will be launching its Access, Outreach, and Impact program. This will entail securing pledges from academic and extension program to purchase shares to support the journal, thus allowing it to become the world’s first subscription-free community supported journal. Coupled with this new financial model, Hilchey and Christian will be reaching out to scholars of color at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Tribal Colleges and Universities that are working in regions with high food insecurity and intractable poverty to encourage them publishing in JAFSCD. They will also be measuring the impact of their outreach using altmetrics that quantify the use of JAFSCD content in these target communities.

“As professionals in the field of food systems, we see our role not just as churning out articles, but also fostering the kinds of information exchange that the field needs to move itself forward. JAFSCD and NAFSN are two of the ways we are helping this happen,” says Hilchey.

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Thu, 17 Nov 2016 00:00:00 -0500http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23737&category=cdaeNew research suggests that Lake Champlain may be more susceptible to damage from climate change than was previously understood—and that, therefore, the rules created by the EPA to protect the lake may be inadequate to prevent algae blooms and water quality problems as the region gets hotter and wetter.

“This paper provides very clear evidence that the lake could be far more sensitive to climate change than is captured by the current approach of the EPA,” said University of Vermont professor Asim Zia, the lead author of the new study. “We may need more interventions—and this may have national significance for how the agency creates regulations.”

More than modest

The study, led by a team of ten scientists from UVM and one from Dartmouth College, used a powerful set of computer models that link the behavior of social and ecological systems. Their results show that accelerating climate change could easily outpace the EPA’s land-use management policies aimed at reducing the inflow of pollution from agricultural runoff, parking lots, deforestation, cow manure, lawn fertilizer, pet waste, streambank erosion—and other sources of excess phosphorus that cause toxic algae and lake health problems.

The EPA’s modeling to prepare its rules under what’s called the TMDL, for “total maximum daily load,” concluded that “any increases in the phosphorus loads to the lake due to the climate change are likely to be modest (i.e. 15%),” the agency writes. But the eleven scientists, within the Vermont EPSCoR program at UVM, who led the new modeling were concerned that this approach might underestimate the range of likely outcomes in a warmer future.

UVM professor Chris Koliba, a co-author and social scientist on the new study observed that, “there have been extensive efforts by federal regulators, the State of Vermont, and many other stakeholders to try to remediate and improve water quality in our watersheds. These should be honored. The message of our research is not to demean that work, but to say that in the long run protecting the lake is going to take a lot more than what's being proposed right now.”

Limited options

The new lake model, with support from the National Science Foundation, integrates a much larger assembly of possible global climate change models and greenhouse gas pathways than the current TMDL approach used in its modeling. And the Vermont scientists delved deeply into the indirect and interactive effects of land use changes, “legacy phosphorus” that’s been piling up for decades in the sediment at the bottom of the lake, and other factors. From this, they created a set of forecasts for what might happen to Lake Champlain over the next few decades out to 2040—including changes in water quality, temperature, and the severity of algae blooms. Their result: a much more dramatic range of possible outcomes—and greater uncertainty—than those assumed in the EPA’s approach.

In several of the plausible hotter and wetter scenarios that the model considers, a cascading set of problems could lead to phosphorous pollution levels in segments of Lake Champlain that “drastically limit land management options to maintain water quality,” the team wrote—especially in shallow bays like Missisquoi Bay that was the focus of the new study. In the long run, the risk of underestimating the impacts of climate change could lead to what the scientists call “intractable eutrophic conditions”—a permanent change in the lake that leads to self-perpetuating algae blooms, lost fisheries, and poor water quality.

New tool

The new integrated assessment model created by the NSF-funded team under the science leadership of Asim Zia provides a powerful tool that goes far beyond understanding Lake Champlain.

By connecting sub-models—of human behavior and land use, watershed dynamics, global climate models “downscaled” to the local region, and the hydrology of the lake itself—the overall model links together “the behavior of the watershed, lake, people and climate,” said Judith Van Houten, UVM professor of biology, director of Vermont EPSCoR, and co-author on the new study. This provides “a way forward to pull back the veil that often surrounds effects of climate change,” she says.

“Integrating these models is an enormous achievement that will be exportable across the US and be of practical use to many states and countries as they try to develop policies in the face of climate change,” she said. It can allow lake and land managers to test scenarios that draw in a huge range of time scales and types of interactions, ranging from water chemistry to air temperature to land use policies.

Only by solving this kind of model-of-many-models problem, “as we have done,” Van Houten said, could a tool be created that has predictive power for decades ahead, “allowing stakeholders to test their ideas,” she says, and even “describing the health of the lake out to the turn of the century.”

UVM hydrologist Arne Bomblies, a co-author on the study, noted that, “We show through this modeling work the importance of a more comprehensive consideration of climate change impact mechanisms to achieve water quality goals, and the need to adequately address climate change uncertainty.”

“Lake Champlain’s future is sensitive to climate change,” Bomblies said, “and similar challenges are faced by other impaired waters throughout the United States.”

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Mon, 07 Nov 2016 00:00:00 -0500http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23687&category=cdaeFarming is a profession rife with the risk of bodily harm. Unfortunately, many farmers lack the sufficient health insurance to protect themselves and their family in the event of a medical crisis. In a world where tractors, animals, and exposure to the elements compound the potential health challenges any of us face, this means that many farmers are one injury away from financial collapse.

The adoption of the Affordable Care Act has opened up new possibilities for farmers to access insurance, but despite the national mandate, many farmers remain uninsured or underinsured.

“When we surveyed farmers, 65% of them identified the cost of health insurance as a serious problem for their business—above the cost of inputs and other potential economic threats,” says Shoshanah Inwood, Assistant Professor in the UVM Department of Community Development and Applied Economics. “Like any small business, farmers are making health insurance decisions for their family and their employees. We’re hoping to provide them with tools to navigate those decisions.”

The HIREDnAg project is tackling the issue from multiple perspectives: interviewing farmers and ranchers to understand their needs, talking to extension and tax experts to take advantage of their unique access to farmers, analyzing the impact of state and national policies, and developing educational tools to aid service providers as they help farm families make smart health insurance decisions.

Inwood and her collaborators recently convened a Summit on Health, Agriculture and Rural Economic Development in Vermont, the first event nationwide to bring together the health and agricultural sectors. Participants at the one-day event represented a wide range of stakeholders: state and health service agencies, farming and agriculture organizations, University of Vermont researchers and Extension professionals, and financial institutions.

The stated goal for the day was to discuss how to improve health insurance information and enrollment processes for Vermont farm families, with the goal of identifying concrete next steps for meeting the unique health insurance needs of farmers and their families.

Participants at the Summit discussed the complicating factors that can affect farmer access to health insurance at different life stages. Young families often need childcare at the same time that they are growing their businesses and reinvesting in the farm—yet many rural areas lack affordable childcare options.

Because eligibility depends on the previous year’s tax filings, fluctuating farm incomes can mean that families may be eligible for federal subsidies one year, but lose them the next year—despite being in the middle of another bad year.

To mitigate these challenges, many families utilize off-farm jobs to gain access to benefits. But even this can pose challenging, if the off-farm partner is needed on the farm, but cannot leave their job because their family would lose health insurance benefits.

With the average age of farmers nationwide 58 years old, a growing population of elderly farmers are approaching retirement. However, many of them have been paying low taxes for their entire careers, and won’t receive much from their social security benefits.

When farmers do decide to go out and purchase their own insurance, they enter the complicated health insurance world, which often struggles to understand their complex income streams and unique business situations. The average time it takes for a farmer to enroll is twice that of the general population.

“Navigating the marketplace can be a very confusing and frustrating process,” says Alana Knudson, Co-Director of the Walsh Center for Rural Health Policy located at NORC at the University of Chicago. “We’re hoping to streamline that process by making sure tax and health insurance professionals have the tools they need to accurately assess farmer eligibility.”

Knudson says she and others outside Vermont see the state as an opportune place to innovate and test some of the solutions the HIREDnAg researchers are developing, because of its history of leadership in healthcare policy.

“We’ve been watching Vermont for years. Even 20 years ago, we were looking at what Vermont was doing. You’ve helped shape health policy that has gone forward to the national level.”

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Fri, 28 Oct 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23643&category=cdaeThe University of Vermont hosts the annual Legislative Summit on November 16 at the Davis Center. The summit this year is focused on issues around health care. There wiill also be tours of the new STEM building starting at 9:30

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Fri, 23 Sep 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23428&category=cdaeThe importance of buying local food receives a lot of lip service among proponents of sustainable food systems, but what value does buying locally actually provide to local economies? And how can an institution know whether their purchases of local food are really helping local farms and communities?

That’s the question Diane Imrie, director of Nutrition Services at University of Vermont Medical Center, wanted to answer about the hospital’s local food procurement program. She enlisted the help of David Conner, associate professor in UVM’s Department of Community Development and Applied Economics, who studies the economics of sustainable food systems. David, in turn, brought on Florence Becot, research specialist at the UVM Center for Rural Studies, who is also a doctoral student in the UVM Food Systems Graduate Program.

Conner and Becot looked at the hospital’s purchasing data from 2012 to understand how the impact of local food purchases rippled into the local economy. Their results show the valuable role UVM Medical Center plays in the Vermont economy: the hospital’s $1.6 million in local food purchases contributed to $1.1 million in additional economic activity in Vermont in 2012. The research also highlights how producers obtain additional benefits from their association with the hospital, which further supports their businesses. The study was recently published the Journal of Foodservice Management & Education: Assessing the Impacts of Local Hospital Food Procurement: Results from Vermont.

So how do these local purchases result in additional economic activity? One of the primary ways this value occurs is by preventing economic “leakage” from the Vermont economy to companies outside the state. The idea of leakage is based on the concept that a portion of any purchase from a company based outside Vermont will leave the state’s economy. So if you buy a tomato at a chain grocery store, for example, even if that tomato was produced locally, some portion of your money inevitably goes to corporate profits out of state.

Purchases from local producers and distributors, on the other hand, will keep more of the money circulating locally. When you subtract the costs of production that go to purchasing inputs like fuel and imported fertilizers, a greater portion will stay local.

Conner and Becot were able to quantify that portion that stays in the local economy by using economic modeling tools that estimate the value of money flowing into specific sectors of the economy. Due to an economic factor called the “multiplier effect,” they showed that every dollar UVM Medical Center spent on local food generated an additional $0.38 to $0.68 of value for the local economy.

But they didn’t stop there. As they learned about the hospital’s foodservice, Conner and Becot realized there was an interesting story to tell about the experiences of both the vendors who sell to the hospital and the people who eat there. So they added on a qualitative piece to the study, which involved interviews with producers, distributors, and customers.

One of the findings from their conversations from producers was that the hospital serves an important supply chain development role. Imrie and her colleagues help farmers transition into selling to wholesale markets by getting them up to speed, then buying from them. For example, they have provided direct financing for infrastructure to increase a farm's production capacity. Once a producer is an established vendor with the hospital, it sends a message to other potential buyers that the producer is wholesale ready. If a vendor has a successful relationship with a hospital, an institution that requires consistency and quality, this indicates they are sophisticated enough to sell to other wholesale buyers. In this way, the association with the hospital’s supply chain lends a certain prestige.

“We buy locally because we have the ability to personally interact with many local producers,” says Imrie. “This allows us to better understand the quality of their food, the challenges that they face as producers, and how we might be able to help. As an anchor institution in our community it is a very important role that we can play.”

On the consumer side, Conner and Becot learned that while patients are served from the same kitchens, the majority of the hospital’s customers eat at the hospital’s retail locations. Most of these are employees of the hospital, some are visitors to the hospital, and the remainder are UVM staff, faculty, and students who are drawn by convenience, quality of food, and low prices.

Conner says studies like these can bring a sense of purpose and clarity to institutional foodservice local food programs. “Diane is a real leader in local food procurement,” said Conner. “This kind of study helps her understand where the hospital stands.”

UVM Medical Center has received national recognition for its leadership in dining innovation. As one of the first hospitals in the country to sign the Healthy Food in Healthcare pledge, Imrie’s team has been thinking creatively for over a decade about how to move towards healthier, local, and sustainable menus. In 2013, the hospital won the “Sustainable Food Procurement Award” from Healthcare Without Harm, a national organization that promotes sustainability in healthcare institutions. This year, they were recognized with a “Silver Plate Award” from the International Foodservice Manufacturers Association.

Imrie sees this work rippling beyond the economic impact in Vermont. “The research allowed me to think about how this work can be replicated across the country and how it can shift our communities in a positive direction in terms of economics, farm viability, and health improvement.”

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Tue, 30 Aug 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23300&category=cdaeAfter graduating from CDAE as a CEnt major in 2015, Joe moved to Bellingham, Washington to serve as an AmeriCorps VISTA at Western Washington University. Fitting to his CDAE degree, Joe works to build capacity and sustainability in the Woodring College of Education’s unique Learning in Communities and Schools (LinCS) service-learning program by implementing and updating technology for scheduling and surveys, improving systems of communication and feedback, and collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data from students and community partners. Joe is responsible for training and supporting 400 undergraduate and graduate students completing service-learning projects in Title I schools; during the 2015-2016 academic year Woodring service-learners contributed over 6,000 hours of service to the greater Bellingham community. He continues to work with university faculty to interview public school staff and administrators to increase Western students’ preparation for entering the community.

Joe feels that CDAE prepared him to effectively enter a new community, recognize and map assets, and utilize a SWOT analysis to take advantage of opportunities.

"The focus in CDAE courses on service-learning prepared me with the knowledge and experience to improve student engagement in service-learning projects and increase the impact University service-learners have on the Bellingham community. The opportunities to serve as a teaching assistant and communications intern with CDAE gave me confidence to be effective on my first day of work."

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Wed, 03 Aug 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23225&category=cdaeIn the spring of 2015 MPA Professor Chris Koliba undertook a Fulbright Fellowship in Sri Lanka. In addition to conducting research on the governance of community-based climate change adaptation projects for the UNDP, Koliba gave a series of lectures on Good Governance. He gave his final lecture in the Northern Providence of Sri Lanka in Jaffna, a city and region hit hardest by the 30 years of civil war that tore the country apart. There, he befriended Mr. Sambasivam Sutharsan, a senior level career civil servant with the Central Government Northern Providence. Sutharsan–a person of Tamil origin–has been instrumental in the reconstruction of Jaffna. He recently completed his MPA degree at the University of Colombo, completing a thesis on democratic accountability. Koliba advised his thesis project and is working to get the study published. A survey of public sector and civil society leaders in Jaffna, Sutharsan presented his research at the 3rd Annual Conference on Democratic Governance in Developing Countries Conference, convened by the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in Washington, DC. Koliba accompanied Sutharsan to the conference and toured the Nation's Capital in the process. "I am inspired to see the growth of democratic institutions in Sri Lanka and am honored to support leading public adminstrators like Sutharsan who are leading the way to a new era of peace and stability for the island nation," says Koliba.]]>http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23151&category=cdae
Fri, 15 Jul 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23151&category=cdaeBy STEVE ZIND

The idea of youth flight from Vermont seems like an article of faith. Everyone knows young people who have left the state for college, for jobs and for a different lifestyle. But it turns out the numbers show nearly as many young people are coming to Vermont as leaving.

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Mon, 09 May 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=22856&category=cdaeThe University of Vermont has been awarded a $494,110 grant from the National Institutes of Food and Agriculture at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to implement and assess a new method of food distribution -- called food boxes -- that could add to farmers’ bottom line and increase traffic for retailers while making healthy, fresh food available to a population that doesn’t normally buy directly from farms, either via farmers markets or through a community supported agriculture (CSA) co-op.

Food boxes are selections of assorted fresh produce packaged by farmers in boxes they distribute to community gathering places like country stores or libraries, which promote them at the point of purchase and through the web and social media. Unlike CSAs, food boxes are non-subscription and, in locations where they’re accepted, can be paid for with food stamps.

The program will launch beginning this summer. The grant, “Farm Fresh Food Boxes: Expanding Rural Economies Through New Markets for Farmers and Retailers,” came to UVM. It will also be used to implement food box programs in California and Washington state, providing three different settings in which to test the concept.

Extension faculty at UVM and at the University of California, Davis and Washington State University will implement the program in their respective states. The Center for Rural Studies, part of UVM’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, will assess the program’s impact in all three states.

Preliminary data from a 2012 UVM Extension pilot of the food box model, which helped UVM win the grant, showed measurable benefits to the farms and retail sites that participated and to consumers.

"They also make fresh, healthy food available to consumers who may not be able to afford a CSA and don’t feel comfortable at a farmers market or who live in communities that don’t have one.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Peter Welch collectively issued this statement: “For more than 30 years, the University of Vermont Center for Rural Studies has successfully connected people and communities to address social, economic and resource-based challenges. The Farm Fresh Food Boxes is another outstanding example of this approach that will have real impact here in Vermont. This research will improve the economic viability of our farms -- which have been challenged by massive, out-of-state operations and national supermarket chains -- with an approach that will bring healthy food to our most rural communities.”

The other project director for the grant is Marilyn Sitaker of Batelle Memorial Institute in Washington.

The UVM grant was part of $15.6 million in grants announced by the USDA this week designed to increase prosperity in rural America through research, education, and extension programs focused on promoting rural community development, economic growth, and sustainability. All the grants were made through the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Foundational program, administered by USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

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Mon, 09 May 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=22842&category=cdaeAnna Herman puts her hands down into the dirt and pulls out a large clump of grass. Behind an old motel on Shelburne Road, she and a crew of about twenty UVM students from professor Dan Baker’s project planning course are chopping through the sod, laying out wood-chip paths, selecting pea and carrot seeds, and turning over a rectangle of soil about the size of a tennis court.

They’re making a community garden -- and trying something new.

"This garden may the first model of its kind in the country," says Herman, UVM class of 2012, who took Baker's course several years ago -- and is now a staff person for the Champlain Housing Trust. This garden will serve the residents of Harbor Place, temporary housing for homeless people.

“We have people who've been here for several months, and we have people who are here for just one night,” Herman says. “That’s why this model of community gardening is completely different. Our guests often don’t know what tomorrow will bring or where they’ll be staying the next night, so the whole idea is to bring healthy food to the residents. The staff will have harvested food in the office -- and people can come out here whenever they want and eat something fresh.”

The UVM students spent the semester planning how to reclaim an overgrown site here at Harbor Place, a former Econo Lodge that has, itself, been reclaimed by the Champlain Housing Trust.

“The students designed a garden to meet the needs of this population,” explains Dan Baker, a researcher in UVM’s Department of Community Development and Applied Economics, often called CDAE. “The crops that will be grown largely don't have to be cooked. They can be eaten raw since a lot of the rooms here don't have kitchens. And we're trying to find vegetables that kids would like.

"We're going to plant high-value foods that are wanted by the folks that live here,” Baker says, “like mesclun and baby lettuce.”

Professor Dan Baker selects seeds while UVM geography major Taylor Hancock '16, gets a sign ready for the snow peas. “There once was a garden here,” Hancock says, “but it was covered with brush and grass. We’re bringing it back, making it bigger.”

This work at Harbor Place was just one of many efforts in A Day in the Dirt, held on April 30, which had more than one hundred UVM students out working in some dozen community gardens all over Burlington and beyond—building fences, raising raised beds, planting peas, and, yes, getting dirty hauling dirt.

Service-Learning

The whole effort was led by Jess Hyman G’09, executive director of the Vermont Community Garden Network. “In total, we had about three hundred volunteers out this year,” Hyman says. “It engages people of all ages in positive activities that boost our local food system and strengthen community.”

Five UVM service-learning courses led projects over the weekend, including seniors in a capstone course in Public Communication who worked closely with Hyman over the semester to plan the Day in the Dirt; student leaders from this course have played a key role in organizing the event since it started in 2013. “This is what service-learning means,” says Susan Munkres, who leads UVM’s office of Community-University Partnerships & Service Learning (CUPS), “students employing the skills they're gaining on behalf of community partners or contributing to the public good through their courses.”

“At the foundation, students help by, yes, digging the dirt,” Munkres says, “but service-learning goes far beyond providing volunteer labor to worthwhile events. There’s sometimes a misconception about that,” Munkres says. As students progress in service-learning courses, they can, for example, “become consultants, design publications, or plan marketing efforts,” she says, “and at the highest level, advanced students conceive and lead projects over multiple years on behalf of community partners.”

Jess Hyman agrees. “The students working in solidarity with Vermont Community Garden Network and other community organizations are doing projects that have real-world implications. It isn't just a labor pool -- and it isn’t just an academic exercise,” she said. “Service-learning has a huge impact in the community.” Which helps explain why 99 service-learning courses were offered this year at UVM, involving more than 1,700 undergraduate students.

"It's fun to get outside and do some hard work," Short said, who was here as part of professor Christine Votovec’s course, Human Health and the Environment. "And it's great to accomplish something that's not just for yourself."

At another Day in the Dirt site near Burlington’s waterfront railyard, is the recently opened, eponymous RAILYARD. “It’s an apothecary and herb clinic,” explains co-founder Kate Elmer Westdijk G’07, a food systems research specialist at UVM who teaches herbalism courses through the university’s Environmental Program. On an industrial corner outside the building, she and a team of UVM students in Natural Resources 206, Environmental Problem-Solving and Impact Assessment, made a plan for a series of planters and picnic tables.

“We want the outside of the building to reflect the values inside,” says environmental studies major Kristina Puris ’16 who helped lead the effort. Nearby, Rubenstein School grad student Eduardo Rodriguez and undergrad Toni Hall ’16, dump gravel. It will be used to anchor the team’s purple painted buckets. “Then we’ll fill them with soil and put in plants,” Hall says. “You’ll see; it will look a lot more beautiful.”

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Wed, 27 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=22787&category=cdaeIn front of a crowded Memorial Hall in UVM's Waterman Building, CDAE Chair Jane Kolodinsky granted a suite of awards celebrating the achievements of students and faculty members in the department.

The CDAE Department, in collaboration with the UVM Foundation and Tom’s family, also awarded its first of the Tom Patterson Faculty Award permanent faculty award in honor Tom’s tireless service and his devotion to teaching.

Tom retired from the faculty at UVM in 2013, after teaching here for 40 years. Tom retired after battling an early form of Dementia for a few years, which limited his ability to keep doing what he loved the most – teaching and mentoring.

This award is a fitting tribute to Tom who was often recognized for his innovative and outstanding teaching. For those of us who know Tom, we know that Tom believed in and supported all of his students. Tom was an advising wizard and helped countless students navigate their four years. Tom also saw the value of applied skills like public speaking and technology long before anyone else and made it the bedrock of his teaching for decades.

Fittingly, Dr. Jonathan Leonard, one of Tom's dearest friends, colleagues, conspirators, and supporters was given this award. Dr. Leonard is a paragon of the type of faculty member to receive this award and to continue to build upon the legacy that Tom made while at UVM.

In Recognition of Academic Excellence

Community and International DevelopmentMadison DellClaire MaddenOlivia PercocoPaul Witte

Claire Madden: Water as a Common Resource: Economic Institutions for Water Management on a Finite PlanetResearch Mentor: Joshua Farley, Ph.D.

MadisonDellResearch Mentor: Thomas DeSisto, M.S.

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Wed, 06 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=22655&category=cdaeIt’s mid-morning on March 30 at the Vermont Statehouse, and senior Rachel Peck and first-year student Emily von Weise are listening to experts provide testimony to the Vermont House Judiciary Committee on the pros and cons of marijuana legalization. They take notes and occasionally step outside into the Capitol hallway to talk with legislators and lobbyists.

They look and act like reporters covering the Vermont State Legislature, which was exactly the intention of their instructor Richard Watts, research assistant professor in Community Development and Applied Economics, when he designed the new service-learning course "Media-Action-Policy." Their assignment: post a 300-word article to the Vermont Cynic student newspaper website within 48 hours. Late submissions are not accepted nor are corrections after it has been posted.

“The goal of the course is for students to better understand the relationship between media, activism and public policy while using the Vermont State Legislature as a learning laboratory,” says Watts, a former reporter and legislative aide. “The students are loving the accessible, transparent nature of the Vermont Legislature and the experience of seeing it up close and personal.”

Experiencing life at the Statehouse

Peck and von Weise have become quite knowledgeable on the marijuana legalization issue. They have listended to dozens of experts, including UVM alumnus Chuck Ross '78, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets; experts from Colorado and Washington, where marijuana is legal; doctors, psychologists and others specialists.

Outside the committee room, opinions flow from a steady stream of politicos, ranging from the mayor of Rutland, who says legalization is bad for local cities and towns, to a former Vermont attorney general who is in favor of it, to Kevin Ellis, a lobbyist for Ellis Mills Public Affairs, which is representing an anti-marijuana legalization group.

Ellis has agreed to show students what a lobbyist does for a living. A former reporter, he emphasizes the importance of knowing the background of legislators. “There’s a difference between a conservative from Milton and a liberal from Burlington,” he says, ”but you don’t always know how they will vote.” Peck, who posted an article about Ellis the day before, says he knows everything about everyone in the legislature.

“I’m surprised how open people are to listening to both sides of the issue and hearing about what could happen if it was legalized,” says von Weise, who, days later, was one of the first to report on a vote by the House Judiciary Committee to overhaul the marijuana bill and remove legalization. “It’s more complicated than most people think,” adds Peck. “There’s only so much you can learn in the classroom, so I’m enjoying the opportunity to expand beyond it and learn about these issues up close.”

Student research helps shape state laws

Media-Action-Policy isn't the only UVM class that brings students into the heart of state government. Since 1998, students in the Vermont Legislative Research Service course have provided non-partisan policy research reports to Vermont state legislators -- information that directly impacts state policy. Legislators, who are invited to request the type of research they need, have come to rely on the service and the full reports, memos or links to key resources it produces for them.

“Their research was eye-opening both in detail and breadth and right on point for the question we asked,” said Burlington Rep. Jean O’Sullivan, who along with Rep. Valerie Stuart, asked for research on post-secondary education enrollment. “We had quite a lot of national information but nothing unique to the state. Valerie and I will be sharing their work with our Commerce Committee, and it will be our jumping off point when we work with the House Education Committee redesigning how technical education is delivered."

Legislative mentors as teachers

Now in its ninth year, the Charlie Ross Environmental Public Service Practicum, taught by Clare Ginger, associate professor in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, is yet another UVM service-learning course that interfaces with the legislature. With a focus on environmental and energy issues, students in the class spend time with mentors at the Statehouse, where they attend committee hearings, floor debates and caucus meetings. They write memos, work on constituent communications, and engage in policy discussions -- work that leads up to policy recommendations in a final research paper and policy prospectus.

“I don’t believe there is any other place in the U.S. where students can engage so freely, openly and comfortably with state lawmakers,” says senior Brock Gibian, who took the seminar last year when he ran for the Burlington City Council. "It has instilled in me a strong sense of public service and civic engagement," adding that he hopes to pursue graduate work and a career that effects positive change in the world. "It has made me realize that public policy is the greatest driver of change."

Outside of the marble halls of the Statehouse, students in Ginger's class get to engage in less formal settings with legislators and government officials: over dinner on Monday nights. Former students of the seminar also make appearances to talk about their professional experiences and coach current students on their future careers.

“I took the Charlie Ross Practicum my sophomore year, and it changed the way I looked at environmental policy,” writes Carson Casey, who now works for Vermont solar company SunCommon. “The practicum was a weekly seminar with some of the most influential people in the state. It was during these seminars, I began to realize the impact one person’s voice could have, especially here in Vermont.”

BURLINGTON, Vt.- Food manufacturers Campbell’s, General Mills, Kellogg and Mars (among others) have all reported they will begin labeling branded products that contain GM (genetically modified) ingredients in anticipation of the Vermont labeling law that goes into effect in July.Results of the University of Vermont’s Center for Rural Studies 2016 Vermonter Poll provides evidence that Vermonters continue to show strong support for a labeling law. Specifically, more than 75 percent support the mandatory GM labeling law, according to the Vermonter Poll, while just ten percent oppose the law and the rest are neutral on the issue. Among people who said they search for information about GM, over 90 percent are in favor of the law.

“We have been asking Vermonters for many years whether they believe there should be some type of mandatory GM labeling law,” said Center for Rural Studies Director Jane Kolodinsky. “For more than 15 years, a strong majority of Vermonters has been supportive of GM labeling.”

Vermont has long been a leader on the GM labeling issue. In 1995, Vermont passed a short-lived law to label milk that may have been produced using rBST. Vermont’s leadership on the issue helped prompt voluntary labeling guidelines for rBST free dairy products, a label common on dairy foods today.“In order for people to make decisions that meet their needs, they need clear and factual information.Vermont is leading the way again,” said Kolodinsky.

Campbell’s Soup Company agrees. According to President and CEO Denise Morrison in a public announcement of company policy in January , “[we] acknowledge that consumers appreciate what goes into our food and why…we have always believed consumers have a right to know what’s in their food.”And, company spokesperson Tom Hushen wrote, “to be clear, there will be no price increase as a result of Vermont or national GMO labeling for Campbell’s products.”

However, not everyone accepts a consumers’ rights to know what they are buying. There have been two unsuccessful attempts at the national level to stop States from passing labeling laws, most recently S.2621 Biotechnology Food Labeling Uniformity Act was defeated on March 16, 2016.And in Vermont, attempts to overturn the labeling law continue as the Grocery Manufacturers Association (and other food industry associations) continues to contest the law in Federal court.According to Todd Daloz of the Vermont Attorney General’s office “Vermont is not alone in its fight to ensure consumer information; eight other states stand with us in support of a state’s ability to promote informed consumer decision-making through accurate, factual labeling.”

The Vermonter Poll, which began in 1990 and is conducted each year in February, provides policy makers and citizens with evidence about public opinion on contemporary issues.The sample for the poll is representative of the Vermont adult population with responses from 642 households in 2016.It has a confidence and error rate of 95 +/- 5 percent.This year’s poll included questions about several current public policy issues, including food safety, sugary drink taxes, alternative energy, migrant labor, and land use. Poll results will be available on the CRS website:www.uvm.edu/crs.

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Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=22630&category=cdaeThree women from the UVM College of Agriculture and Life Sciences were honored recently at the 13th annual Women’s Awards Banquet held on March 16th. The event is sponsored by the UVM Women’s Center.

Dr. Kathleen Liang, Professor in Community Development and Applied Economics, and Animal Science Senior Lecturer, Dr. Jenny Wilkinson, were both honored with the Outstanding Faculty Woman Award. The award recognizes their significant contributions to the lives of women on campus through service, teaching, and feminist scholarship. Dr. Linda Berlin, Extension Associate Professor, was one four women recognized for their work on anti-sexist endeavors, drawing connections between various communities to end multiple forms of oppression.

Dr. Liang has designed, developed, and implemented innovative, award-winning courses in entrepreneurship within CDAE since 1998. Liang is credited with being the first educator to design and implement an entrepreneurship curriculum within an agriculture and life science program. Her “learning-in-the-now” approach to teaching and dynamic interactions with students push them from the classroom into real life applications of entrepreneurship.

Dr. Jenny Wilkinson is a Senior Lecturer in the department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences teaching Equine Science. She is also the faculty advisor at the UVM Cooperative Horse Barn, and advisor to the UVM Dressage team. Dr. Wilkinson had an article posted in the NY Times last year about sexual assault advocacy, and has been known by her students to always be there for support during their time at UVM. Students who have worked with Dr. Wilkinson praise her for her enthusiasm, and look up to her as a role model and advisor to many. “It is inspiring and empowering to have such an accomplished woman to guide us”, said one of her nominators.

Dr. Linda Berlin, Extension Associate Professor, works across disciplines to better understand food system concerns and to identify approaches that have the potential to achieve multiple objectives related to consumers` needs and interests, as well as the environment and sustainable agriculture. Dr. Berlin was a part of the Food Systems Spire Steering Committee, as well as extensive work outside of UVM. She has a special interest in how current policy affects economically disadvantaged communities, and others who might be marginalized in a mainstream approach. She is a widely consulted researcher as well as a professor in nutrition and food sciences.

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Wed, 09 Mar 2016 00:00:00 -0500http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=22476&category=cdaeVermont’s maple industry contributed between $317 and $330 million in total sales to the state’s economy in 2013, according to a recently completed economic contribution study conducted for the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association (VMSMA) by the Center for Rural Studies at the University of Vermont.

The industry added between $140 and $144 million to Vermont in profits and wages, the study said, and supported between 2,735 and 3,169 full-time equivalent jobs. The study’s conclusions are based on a survey of Vermont maple producers and telephone interviews with maple-related businesses in the state, including maple packers/processors, equipment manufacturers, and sales and installation operations.

It is the first economic contribution study of Vermont’s maple industry, said Center for Rural Studies director Jane Kolodinsky.

“People have the sense that the maple industry makes an important economic contribution to the state of Vermont,” said Matt Gordon, executive director of the VMSMA. “This study confirms and quantifies just how large and vital that contribution is. Maple is not just a part of Vermont’s heritage but an important part of its economy.”

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Vermont is the largest maple producer in the United States, accounting for 42 percent of production, and maple is the fourth most-valued agricultural commodity in the state. Production grew by 111 percent from 1992 to 2014, from 570,000 to 1,320,000 gallons, according to USDA.

The new study adds significant new data to the broad information available from federal and state agencies.

The average maple sugar producer in Vermont has 3,451 taps and produces 1,221 gallons of syrup. The median – or midpoint – for producers is 1,175 taps with 295 gallons of syrup produced, indicating that the relatively small number of producers with more than 5,000 taps produces the bulk of the state’s syrup.

In the last five years, 47.7 percent of producers reported that their maple production increased, while 37.2 percent saw their production remain the same. Larger producers, on average, increased production, while smaller ones stayed constant. That pattern held when producers were asked to forecast production levels for the next five years.

Maple-related business contributed the majority of total sales to the state: $237 million of the lower end of the estimate ($317 million) and $238 million at the higher end ($330 million). Maple producers added $79 million and $92 million to lower and higher end of the two estimates.

Maple syrup was overwhelmingly the main product on maple operations, accounting for 90 percent of sales on average, with maple cream a distant second at 13.8 percent.

The two largest threats foreseen by producers were related to the environment (climate change, changing weather patterns and Asian longhorn beetles) and overproduction.

The two largest opportunities producers saw are new markets, including Asia and Europe, and in the marketing opportunities presented by growing consumer interest in natural food.

Material and supplies, including evaporators, tapping tools, spouts, mainlines and jugs, are the largest expense for producers of all sizes, ranging from 88 percent for operations with up to 499 taps to 73.8 percent for operations with between 2,000 and 4,999 taps.

Most of the supplies purchased benefitted companies based in Vermont: 80.6 percent of companies providing supplies to maple producers were based in Vermont, with 8.8 percent in New Hampshire, 1.4 percent in Quebec and the rest scattered in other states.

The top three Vermont industries affected by the profits and wages in the maple industry were food manufacturing, maple production itself and the retail equipment sector.

The study used two different scenarios to reach its conclusions, one based on the assumption that there are 1,553 maple producers in the state, a figure from the agricultural census conducted by the USDA every four years, and a second based on 1,800 producers, the lower end of the estimate made by VMSMA of between 1,800 and 3000 Vermont maple producers.

The study also includes data gathered in telephone surveys with 15 maple-related business, defined as those that buy maple syrup in bulk for resale or manufacture or install maple equipment. There are 24 of these companies in the state, along with many other smaller retailers whose inventory includes maple equipment.

Researchers used statistical techniques to gauge the contribution of the full maple production sector from a sample of 295, with a resulting margin of error of plus or minus five percentage points.

The sample for maple-related companies was not large enough to extrapolate from. For the report, researchers used only the data supplied in the 15 telephone interviews, so the sales and employment data for the group is likely under-reported.

The study used a customized version of a commonly used economic impact model to reach its conclusions. The model allowed the researchers to determine not only direct sales by the maple industry, but indirect sales (sales that results from suppliers of the sugar makers purchasing goods and services and hiring workers to fill the order from the sugar maker), and induced sales (sales from the effects of the changes in household income due to the economic activity from the direct and indirect effects).

The economic contribution of the maple industry is likely underestimated because it doesn’t take into account tourism related to the maple industry,” said Florence Becot, a research specialist at the Center for Rural Studies, who authored the report. “If the contributions of open houses during maple season and maple festivals were taken into account, the number would be even bigger,” she said. “But clearly, maple is a vital part of Vermont’s economy and culture.”

Founded in 1893, the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association helps promote and protect the branding of pure Vermont maple products and to serve as the official voice for Vermont sugar makers. Its membership is composed of Vermont maple sugarmakers, processors, and equipment manufacturers and retailers.

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Tue, 09 Feb 2016 00:00:00 -0500http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=22324&category=cdaeToday, the Peace Corps announced that the University of Vermont ranked No. 6 among medium-sized schools on the agency’s 2016 Top Volunteer-Producing Colleges and Universities list. This is the fifth straight year that UVM has ranked among the top 10 medium-sized schools, with 31 Catamounts currently volunteering worldwide.

“The Peace Corps is a unique opportunity for college graduates to put their education into practice and become agents of change in communities around the world,” Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet said. “Today’s graduates understand the importance of intercultural understanding and are raising their hands in record numbers to take on the challenge of international service.”

Alumni from more than 3,000 colleges and universities nationwide have served in the Peace Corps since the agency’s founding in 1961, including 874 UVM alumni.

Vermont is also represented on the rankings of small schools, with Middlebury College ranking No. 6 and Saint Michael’s College ranking No. 11.

Vermont is the top Peace Corps volunteer-producing state in the nation on a per capita basis. Fifty-two residents of the Green Mountain State are currently serving in the Peace Corps. In 2015, the Burlington-South Burlington metro area also ranked No. 3 nationally for per-capita production of Peace Corps volunteers, with 18 area residents serving overseas.

This year’s rankings follow a 40-year high in applications for the Peace Corps in 2015. This record-breaking number of applicants comes after the first full year that the agency’s historic application and recruitment reforms have been in place.

Select the University of Vermont from the list of medium-sized schools to see where alumni are currently serving:

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Mon, 11 Jan 2016 00:00:00 -0500http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=22115&category=cdaeThe UVM Food Systems Initiative is offering scholarships to UVM students to attend the NOFA-VT Winter Conference, hosted by the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont and happening on the UVM campus February 13 and 14, 2016. Each scholarship will cover registration for one day of the conference. Undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education students from any program are eligible.

Applicants will receive an email alerting them whether they have been chosen as scholarship recipients by Friday, January 29.

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Tue, 24 Nov 2015 00:00:00 -0500http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=21884&category=cdaeWorld leaders, scholars and activists will gather in Paris this month for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP21. This year, the annual gathering aims to establish, for the first time in more than 20 years of UN negotiations, a binding, international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius.

Four representatives from UVM will make the trip, including three professors and one student. Read on to learn about their work in Paris.

Gina Fiorile

Sophomore environmental studies major

What will you be doing at COP21?

I am a youth delegate to the UNFCCC Climate Conference, and have the honor of representing the voice of youth internationally during the negotiations. On Monday Nov. 30, in conjunction with our collaborators from NOAA and the Association of Science and Technology Centers, the Wild Center's Youth Climate Summit Program will be hosting a panel at the U.S. Center on which I will speaking with the former vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at 1:15 p.m. Paris time. On Dec. 3 at the Cité des Sciences/Universcience center, we will be hosting a similar event at 3 p.m. Paris time to showcase our work as a youth climate organization in addition to the work that is being done by students around the world.

You've had quite a year. Tell us about the events that have led up to your involvement in the conference.

I have been an intern at the Wild Center, the Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks, since early this summer, but I became involved in the Youth Climate Summit Program at the Wild Center as a member of the steering committee when I was in high school. Last year, our Youth Climate Summit model was highlighted as a part of President Obama's Climate Action Plan through the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's Climate Education and Literacy Initiative. This year, I was invited to the White House twice as a representative of the program, in February to receive the "Champion of Change" award and in August to participate in the Back-to-School Climate Education Event. Now that the Youth Climate Summit model has been backed by the White House, our goal is to implement 10 Youth Climate Summits nationally and internationally by creating a network of active youth leaders. So far, I have been able to help organize and attend Youth Climate Summits in Seattle, Detroit, the Adirondacks, Finland, and Vermont in addition to the youth-focused events at COP21.

What are you hoping to share at the conference? And what are you hoping to gain?

Attending COP21 as a youth delegate is an incredible opportunity to share what I've seen happening among students around the country. I want to showcase what actions students have taken to reduce the impacts of climate change in order to exemplify our unified call for strong climate legislation and policy. Through my experiences in Paris, I hope to gain inspiration from what students from around the world are doing to take action on climate change that I do not yet know about. I believe that we are stronger when we work together, and that if everyone did their part in their area of the world, climate change would no longer be a threat. To see and be inspired by other youth who are doing their part will be highly encouraging.

What's your advice to youth who want to get involved in climate activism?

Every individual can take steps to act on climate change no matter their age, interests or ability level. Each person brings valuable and unique skills to the table in the fight against climate change. Engineers can help improve renewable energy technologies, musicians can create an artistic representation of our sustainable goals, writers can communicate thoughts and emotions relating to climate change. No matter who you are, there is something you can do, and something that you need to do for our climate. We are the generation who will bear the most impacts of climate change, and there is no time to lose. Follow your passions, and don't let anyone stop you.

I have studied COP conferences since they started, enlisting UVM as an official observer since 2008 through our Office of Sustainability. This allows me to conduct research on negotiators and climate activists from 180 nations over two weeks. My 2013 book on climate governance was informed by this work.

As for COP21, I am interested in climate policy targets being negotiated under the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP), a group created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Through ADP, many countries are pledging greenhouse gas mitigation targets for 2020 to 2035, known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).

I am engaged with technical negotiations on REDD+, a proposed UN plan for reducing tropical deforestation and greenhouse gases, and North-South debates going on for pledges to climate adaptation fund.

As a science leader of an NSF-EPSCOR-funded effort to protect Lake Champlain water quality in the face of climate change, I will also study the pros and cons of various adaptation policies and implementation experiences across the world.

How will your work contribute to event?

Besides observing treaty negotiations on ADP, REDD+ and the climate fund, I will work with official delegations from Pakistan, Peru and other developing countries -- meeting with their negotiators, unpacking the language of the treaty, and developing a consensus position on the treaty clauses.

I will also promote the use of climate early warning systems in developing countries, in partnership with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Norwegian Refugee Council and NGOs. Here is a link to my paper on the subject co-authored with Gund Institute PhD student Courtney Hammond-Wagner.

In my recent blog post on climate change and COP, I argued that long term climate policy needs a new focus on sustainable and resilient community development, not one artificially divided along mitigation and adaptation lines. I will argue this at COP21 and beyond.

In terms of outcomes, what do you see as a best-case scenario?

COP21 is currently our best shot at taking global collective action to bend the greenhouse gas curve. The good news is that more than 80 percent of nations have agreed to participate in INDC commitments. But we must raise the ambition level. Current INDCs will reduce projected global temperatures from 4-5C to 3-3.5C above industrial standards by 2100. However, to achieve the global policy target of two degrees Celsius, a signed Paris Treaty is critical. That can then be improved and strengthened through further negotiations over the next five years.

What are potential roadblocks to progress?

In pre-COP21 negotiations in Bonn earlier this year, developing countries again called for a $100 billion pledge by rich industrialized countries to fund major climate initiatives. This North-South divide, along with questions of historical guilt versus developing countries’ “right to development,” have plagued past COPs, and may again serve as a daunting roadblock to a signed Paris Treaty.

Lini Wollenberg

Research associate professor, Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Fellow, Gund Institute for Ecological Economics

What will you be doing at COP21?

I am going to COP21 to share best practices for low emissions development in agriculture to help slow climate change and mitigate its impacts. These are the primary areas of my research with the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security program of CGIAR, an international research consortium for agriculture.

Agriculture produces more than 10 percent of global greenhouse gases, so it is a major cause of climate change. But it is also a major source for mitigation, having the capacity to sequester carbon and reduce emissions to compensate for nearly all of its emissions. It is critically important to achieve climate targets.

I will attend the Global Landscapes Forum, which is expected to draw massive attention as a side event of COP21. At least two of my research projects will be presented. I will also meet with colleagues to plan our next 5 years of research.

How will your work contribute to event?

We will present one of our projects: CCAFS Mitigation Options Tool, a new resource for policy-makers. It provides better estimates of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and ranks the most effective low-carbon agricultural practices for 34 crops, depending on your soil type and geography. It is simple to use and available for free online.

Low-emissions farming techniques that we are researching will also be presented. For example, the practice of alternate wetting and drying in paddy rice in Asia can decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 30-50 percent and save water without hurting yields. In developing nations, improving the health and productivity of livestock -- through better vaccines, feed and pasture management -- can improve farmers’ living standards with fewer animals, and therefore less greenhouse gas emissions. Our work with dairy farmers in Kenya to produce more milk with less emissions will also be highlighted.

For me, a best-case scenario would be that world leaders commit to reducing greenhouse gases at levels sufficient to keep the planet under a two-degrees Celsius rise. This would require legally binding commitments from nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- including all the top emitters (U.S., China, Russia, India and Brazil). It would also require significant new financial investment -- potentially through a carbon tax -- to help nations transition to renewable energy systems.

What are potential roadblocks to progress?

International agreements are difficult to achieve. Deep divisions remain among nations about what constitutes a fair distribution of the burden of reduce global greenhouse gases. This is particularly true between rich countries and developing nations. Some say the burden should be calculated by historical emissions, others say by current or future emissions, per capita. And not all countries have the same capacity.

That said, globally, there is a growing awareness that action is urgently required if we are going to stop climate change before massive disruptions become the norm.

Jennie Stephens

Blittersdorf Professor of Science and PolicyRubenstein School of Environmental and Natural Resources, College of EngineeringFellow, Gund Institute for Ecological Economics

What will you be doing at COP21?

I am going to COP21 to inform my research on the renewable energy transition, societal responses to climate change, and energy democracy and justice.

Due to increased security following the terrorist attacks in Paris, some of the civil society demonstrations I planned to attend have been drastically reduced in size. The People’s Climate March, a huge march through Paris calling for action on climate change, has been cancelled. So climate activists are thinking creatively about how to spread their messages.

From Paris, I also plan on Skyping into my UVM undergraduate environmental science course to provide my students with a live update.

How does your scholarly work align with COP21?

Several of my UVM Energy-Climate Transitions Research team projects align with COP21. This includes work on energy system innovations, divestment, and the potential for the renewable energy transition to improve workforce diversity, reduce inequality, strengthen communities, and promote a more inclusive and engaged democracy.

I will pay attention to conversations about inequality, gender and renewable energy. As the energy sector transforms, opportunities for a more inclusive workforce are emerging. But we must intentionally prioritize diversity, or the transition to renewable energy could perpetuate and deepen -- rather than reduce -- inequalities. The male-dominated energy sector plays a huge role in determining what is considered practical and possible, so this relates directly to climate mitigation efforts.

I am also very interested to see how COP21 acknowledges and promotes social change, because we know that technological solutions are inadequate. Cultural and political change related to how we live with high consumption expectations is also essential but these social changes are generally not well integrated into these international negotiations. In 2009, I presented my work at a COP side-event that explored tensions regarding carbon capture and storage technology.

What do you think will happen?

I hope that the civil society mobilization and the climate activism surrounding the negotiations in Paris is peaceful and empowers individuals, organizations and communities.

With the cancellation of the large marches in Paris, events in other cities are taking on greater significance. Organizations and climate activists are working hard to adapt and facilitate a productive and peaceful set of civil actions in Paris and beyond, so there is still strong potential for activists to change the discourse and raise expectations.

Even before the attacks in Paris, French authorities were attempting to minimize the impact of activists, and re-introducing border controls to reduce the number of people entering the country to participate in COP-related events. Some climate activists from developing countries had been unsuccessful in getting visas before the shootings. Access is even more difficult now.

Despite these challenges, climate activists and the climate justice movement are more committed than ever to advocate for strong climate action to reduce societal inequalities of all kinds and move toward a more peaceful and resilient world.

Saint Michael’s Geography professor explains his fascination with Vermont. “I wanted, from the get-go, to be engaged in the places that I visited and lived. And one of the things that’s fascinating about Vermont is that those places and the institutions and the people in those places are remarkably accessible,” he says. “The legislative record and nonprofits in the state and other researchers in the state represent kind of a laboratory, if you like, for you to look at the way in which sometimes very big picture research questions can be examined on a manageable scale.”

Kujawa’s commitment to studying the political, geographic and social systems of Vermont comes both a fascination with their place in larger systems, and a personal connection to place. The geography professor has taught courses on community and regional planning, environmental policy and water resources for nearly 25 years at Saint Micheal’s College. Kujawa also has an official affiliation with the University of Vermont, a partnership through which he has contributed to a host of research projects across disciplines.

Recently, Kujawa has been extensively involved in projects relating to Vermont’s Experimental Program to Simulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR, funded by the National Science Foundation). One project—exploring public perceptions of water quality and Lake Champlain—dates all the way back to his appointment at St. Mike’s in the early 1990s, but has been revitalized by EPSCoR’s Research on Adaptation to Climate Change (RACC) initiative.

“The things I’m interested in is how perceptions – specific perceptions about water quality and the extent to which people will or won’t use the lake for different kinds of activities have evolved over time,” says Kujawa. “That kind of work really coheres with deeper theoretical questions that have driven much of my research, as a geographer, about place and space and scale and the way in which human societies organize and reorganize their relationships with the environment.”]]>